


The Littlest Angel

by KickAir 8P (KickAir8P)



Category: Highlander: The Series, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KickAir8P/pseuds/KickAir%208P
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Springtime in Paris?  More like fall.  Jack has no time for romance while tracking down a dangerous alien . . . or does he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Littlest Angel

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for [Rhi](http://rhi.dreamwidth.org/), details [here](http://gryphonrhi.livejournal.com/343450.html). Not beta'd.
> 
> **Disclaimer:** Only thing mine are the words on the the page. Oh, and the graphic. Everything else belongs to their various Powers That Be.
> 
> **Spoilers:** [Blink](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_%28Doctor_Who%29) and [Pharaoh's Daughter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodes_of_Highlander_%28season_2%29#Pharaoh.27s_Daughter)

==================

 

"C'mon Tosh, my eyeballs are gonna dry out," an American voice said.

Marcus Constantine, on one knee next to his unconscious guard and with a finger on the speed-dial to Security, froze. He knew that voice.

"If you two'd coordinate with each other you wouldn't have that problem." A woman, English.

"I'm not blinking first." A third voice, male, also English.

"Owen, she's right. Blink."

"You think she's right, you blink."

"Blink, and that's an order."

"We're in Paris -- you sure you can give me orders in France?"

"Owen!"

Marcus moved forward and risked a look around the corner. He'd expected some sort of staring contest. Instead, he saw two men, one in an old-fashioned greatcoat, both looking at a sculpture on a pedestal, and an Asian woman crouching over some equipment on the floor.

"Okay, I blinked. Happy?"

"Very. Now I've blinked. Let me know when you need to do it again."

Jack Harkness was the most unusual immortal of his acquaintance -- Marcus had never been able to feel his Quickening, and the chances of that greatcoat concealing a sword were slim to none. But he was immortal, and in the museum after hours, and had rendered at least one guard unconscious. Marcus ghosted up behind the one they'd called Owen and grabbed him, using a grip that promised a broken neck. His earpiece clattered to the floor.

In a split second Jack had spun toward them, drawn and aimed his gun, and backed away several steps. "Let him go."

"Not just yet."

"Mark?!?" A grin split Jack's face and he raised his hands, letting the gun point at the ceiling. "It's not what you think." He was far enough back that he could keep the sculpture in view, and he kept shifting his eyes to it. A rather transparent distraction, if that was his goal.

"Of course not. Why would I think that you've broken into my museum and drugged my guards in an attempt to steal---" he glanced at the piece, and stopped.

It was a seated winged child done in weathered white marble, with its hands over its eyes as if for a game of peek-a-boo. A pedestrian work, its sentimentality would've made it suitable for a garden or a child's gravestone, except for the sharp teeth revealed by the laughing mouth.

He'd never seen it before.

"---a statue which doesn't belong here in the first place?" Jack finished for him. "Thought so."

"Oi!" Owen rasped out. "You two mind chatting while I'm **_not_** being twisted into a pretzel?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "If you'll let Owen go, I'll tell you everything. You might even believe it."

Marcus debated with himself briefly -- much as he disliked losing the advantages of a hostage, as long as he held his man's life in his hands Jack would be focused on that. He loosed his grip and, as a courtesy, stepped back himself rather than shoving his captive away from him. But Owen merely turned back to glare as he retrieved his earpiece.

"Eyes on the angel." Jack reminded him, coming up and gripping Marcus' arm the old Roman way. At that exact moment the woman said "Got it, quantum-locking verified! Oh, where'd it---" and the two of them were suddenly in a public restroom, alone. Marcus felt like he'd been twisted inside out and back again.

"Out of sight," Jack snapped, bundling them into a stall. "Okay, real fast: That was an alien called a Weeping Angel, it just dropped us back into the past, I have no idea how far, and we can't let anyone see us till we know enough to avoid paradoxes. But they tend to bind to a given space/time locus, so if it gets my team they'll come through here too. Questions?"

Alien. In the past. Jack had claimed to be a stranded time-traveler, but ... Marcus gathered himself and looked around. "We're still in the museum, east wing, inside of the last two years."

"You're sure?"

"That's when we remodeled the restrooms."

"Good enough. No questions?"

"It wasn't weeping."

"They never are, not really, 'though I've never heard of one found laughing. It's also the smallest one on record -- the rest have all been adults. That might be why we're so close -- usually they'll drop you 'bout a century back, and maybe a hundred miles away. Pollutes the time-stream something fierce."

"I take it that's not a common ability among aliens?"

"No, but it's how these guys eat. They live on temporal potential. With any luck, you and me? We gave it indigestion. Turning to stone's kind of like a defense mechanism. Theory is that they're refugees from a previous universe, in this one they can only exist in a state of quantum indeterminacy -- if you look at them, that collapses the wave function. It's why they're called "Weeping Angels" -- no eyelids, they usually cover their eyes like they're crying so they don't see each other. And if you think getting blood from a stone's tough, try killing one."

"I take it a sledgehammer's ineffective?"

"Plenty effective, till you take your eyes off the gravel. Then they pop right back like it never happened, 'cause it didn't -- not to them."

"So, how do you kill them?"

"You can't. At best you can contain them. In a few decades we'll be able to get them off-planet, strand them somewhere."

They heard the restroom door open -- Jack sat down on the commode and lifted his feet. They waited until the man finished his business and left, Jack unable to keep the smirk off his face at their relative positions.

"Still no sign of your people."

"Good." Jack opened the flap of his leather wrist-strap. When Marcus had first seen it, he'd thought it looked like something out of Dick Tracy. Now he thought "PDA", and wondered if that was any closer to the truth.

"Okay, the World Clock site says we're only three weeks back, to the day, five after one in the afternoon. Where have you been for the last three weeks?"

"Here, my home, the theater, the grocery---"

"You need a vacation -- I'm thinking somewhere in the country. Tell me someplace you've never been, somewhere you won't be recognized."

"I'm hardly famous, not this century at least."

"We should probably avoid anyplace your friends have recommended -- some of 'em could be there." He tapped industriously on the tiny screen. "Ooooo, here's an idea -- they're low on students to work the grape harvest in Beaujolais. What'd'ya think? Excellent food, spectacular scenery, good company -- huh, too low-class?"

His father's fields when he was a child, working beside the slaves to bring in the grapes... "Not at all."

"Great! I'll take care of everything. No," he said when Marcus opened his mouth, "My treat. You can't touch your accounts, sometime in the next three weeks the previous you would notice. But I've got resources I don't check for months. Okay, first a limo." He started tapping on his PDA.

"I have a cache or two I can tap, especially if you're going to the expense of a limousine to Beaujolais. Won't that be somewhat conspicuous?"

Jack grinned. "That's just for the first leg -- it's hard to get a taxi with smoked-glass windows. But I'll have 'em stock the bar. Wine, or something stronger?"

"Gin."

More tapping on his PDA, and then he was on his earpiece, speaking with someone in flawless Parisian French. After some negotiation he pinched the speaker and asked Marcus "Did you go down to the loading dock today?"

He shook his head, and Jack went back to his haggling. He hung up and said "All set. A limo to the Walmex, a taxi to the train station, then 'Beaujolais, here we come!' Okay, where are you right now?"

"At a restaurant two blocks north of here, meeting with a contributor. I won't be back till almost three."

"Good thing we're going south -- wouldn't want you setting off your own radar. Is the loading dock manned?"

"Yes, but he should be at lunch too."

"What's the sneakiest way to get down there?"

"Unless you have climbing gear in that coat, I'd suggest the back stairwell."

"A popular museum, daytime -- it shouldn't matter if we're seen, only if we're noticed. What'd'ya think?"

Marcus thought back. "I can't guarantee it, but I believe any of my staff not at lunch will be in the offices, and there are no guards stationed between here and the stairwell. There are several cameras, however."

Jack held up his wristband. "This'll take care of the cameras." He stood and sidled around Marcus to the stall's door. "Give me just a minute," he said as he closed it behind him.

It was less then a minute when he said "Okay." Leaving the stall, Marcus had to resist the urge to wash his hands out of habit. Between the mirrors, in what smelled like permanent ink, was a message:  


>   
> **Doc, Tish,  
> Same time, same place.  
> See you there!  
> Jack**  
> 

  
In "Tish" he'd drawn the dot of the "i" as a small circle. Marcus looked at him thoughtfully. "The cleaning staff reported graffiti in a restroom a few weeks ago. Three weeks ago, in fact."

Jack shrugged. "Sorry 'bout that. Lets go."

As they left the restroom and started wending their way through the light crowd, Jack asked "So, your staff, your guards, your museum -- you're the director, Marcus Constantine?"

"Yes. And you're...?"

"Still Captain Jack Harkness. Sorry for calling you Mark -- sloppy of me. Maybe I've been legit too long."

"You have an interesting idea of 'legit'."

"Defending Merry Old England from the Alien Hordes? Pays the bills. And has some nice perks."

"Such as trips to Paris?"

"A bit out of our jurisdiction, but if a temporal loop got out of hand it could destroy the planet. Since that would include England, I think I'll be able to justify it at the next budget meeting."

They reached the stairwell, and Marcus swiped his keycard through the reader to unlock the door. As he closed it behind them Jack asked "Your security system -- how often are the logs reviewed?"

"Every day. But I wouldn't be too concerned -- between misreads and piggybacking, the keycard logging isn't considered reliable."

"Okay."

They'd only gone down a single flight when the door opened above them. "Director, Director!" a frantic voice called down. It was, gods help him, Fournier. "There you are!" He rushed down the stairs to them. "I've been---"

"Hello! Captain Jack Harkness. And who might you be?" He grinned and extended his hand. Flustered, Fournier took it.

"Andre Fournier. Excuse me, I don't...don't..." and he collapsed, Jack grabbing him and easing him down to the steps.

"Works like flunitrazepam, but faster and safer. He won't remember this."

"That must come in handy."

"You've no idea. Come on."

They reached the loading dock with no further trouble and got into the waiting limo, sitting across from each other. Jack gave the driver the address of a bank, one presumably near the shops that were their current destination. Once the privacy screen was up he opened the bar and cracked the cap of the gin, a bottle of Tanqueray. "Martini?"

"Gin and tonic, lime."

"Coming up."

A few moments of work and each of them had a drink in hand. Jack raised his and said "To good company, and the time to enjoy it."

Their glasses clinked together. "Good company and time," Marcus agreed. The hint of quinine brought to mind the coast of India, and the John Company men. Good company indeed.

Jack stretched and relaxed into a sprawl not quite up to methosian standards, but respectable nonetheless. "Anybody waiting at home?"

"No, not since..." Angela's death had been more than ten years ago. "Not for some time."

"I'm sorry."

Marcus nodded. Since that day his life had fallen into a series of routines, familiar and, eventually, comfortable. Time was his habits had served to keep him sharp and fit. Now his fitness was in body only. His mind had dulled.

He looked back to Jack, who was watching Paris pass by through the smoked glass. Jack slowly stirred his martini with the toothpick-skewered olives, and then brought them to his lips, gently teasing one off of the toothpick and returning the other to his drink. If he felt eyes on him, he gave not the slightest hint.

Passivity wasn't Jack's usual style. But for Marcus, whose Roman upbringing insisted that a man both patrician and elder must keep the upper hand in all things, Jack was clearly waiting for Marcus to make the first move. If any.

Marcus thought about that for a bit, and smiled.

  
==================

==================

==================

Three weeks ago -- now -- he hadn't felt the presence of another immortal, so he couldn't risk coming into his own range. Thus Jack had left him sitting in an SUV with "Torchwood" embossed on it in black on black, next to an unremarkable young man in a dark suit, who smiled pleasantly and oh-so-casually kept a hand near his sidearm.

It had been an interesting three weeks. Jack was everything one could want in a traveling companion -- an intriguing conversationalist and a patient listener, a good man to have at your side during a harvest or at your back in a bar fight, and with a mischievous delight in tempting him into sexual adventures that an old Roman general shouldn't have considered. Marcus found himself smiling -- best to stop that before Jack's driver noticed.

But the driver seemed to have other concerns. He put one hand to his earpiece and listened, then said "Understood." He turned to Marcus and said "They're done, you can go on up."

Heading up the stairwell he met Tosh and Owen on their way down, both staring into the box they were carrying and counting to each other. Passing them, he saw the box was almost full of broken marble. Half a child's face snarled up at him, no trace left of the laughter he'd seen before.

When he reached Jack he was next to the now-empty pedestal, running a scan with the equipment Tosh had been using. "That's it, not a trace." He closed the case and slung it over his shoulder. "My people think I'm gonna retcon you. We'll just let 'em keep thinking that."

"You've trusted me with quite a few secrets."

"Hey, you trusted me with yours quite a while back. If you ever get over to Cardiff, look me up -- Roald Dahl Plass, we're the dingy little tourist office down the ramp at the south end."

"Cardiff?!?"

"You thought we were out of London? Not anymore -- long story." He put one hand to his earpiece and said "On my way."

"Not quite yet," Marcus said, and kissed him goodbye. A few moments later Jack broke away, and with a grin and tossed-off salute he was gone.

Marcus walked around the corner and got down on one knee next to his unconscious guard. He checked the man's pulse again, then got out his cellphone. With a finger on the speed-dial to Security, he waited. And when the red light on the camera above him brightened, he pushed the button.

==================

_fin._

 

 

~


End file.
